Storm Babet causes three deaths in UK

(Brechin) The storm Babett continues its damage in the United Kingdom, where it has already caused three deaths in Scotland and England and caused significant flooding, before heading towards Scandinavia on Friday.

Heavy rainfall and strong winds have hit a large area from Ireland to the north of the UK since Wednesday and a red alert remains in force until Saturday in north-east Scotland where “exceptional rainfall” are still planned.

In this particularly affected region, the body of a 57-year-old woman was found in a river in the coastal region of Angus, between Edinburgh and Aberdeen, and a 56-year-old man was killed by a falling tree. on his vehicle, police said.

A man in his 60s was also found dead on Friday morning after being caught in the waters of a stream which overflowed onto a road in Cleobury Mortimer in Shropshire, central England, said West Mercia Area Police.

Leeds Bradford Airport, located in the north of England, announced that it was closing its doors in a message published on X. Earlier in the afternoon, an airliner arriving from Corfu, Greece, was went off the runway while trying to land. There were no injuries, according to a spokesperson.

Evacuations

“Nearly half of October’s average monthly rainfall is expected to fall this evening and tomorrow, in areas already severely affected by exceptional levels of rainfall,” Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf said in a statement on Friday evening.

Presenting his condolences to the families of the victims, he stressed that the emergency services were operating in “incredibly difficult” conditions.

Hundreds of people have had to evacuate their homes since Thursday due to flooding, such as in the town of Brechin in Scotland, where the coastguard went door to door on Thursday evening to ask residents to leave their homes, noted an AFP photographer.

“The river level is 4.4 meters above its normal level. This is unprecedented,” Angus Local Council commented on X.

“It’s absolutely horrible,” Jill Scott, a local elected official, told the PA news agency, referring to people “trapped” in certain neighborhoods of this city. ” The boats [des secouristes] try to reach them, but cannot because the current is too strong.”

Many schools remained closed on Friday in the region, roads and several railway lines were cut.

Six professional soccer matches scheduled for Saturday were also canceled in Scotland.

In Ireland, the first country to be hit, on Wednesday, by Babetthundreds of buildings were flooded in Cork (South), where municipal officials described flooding not seen in at least thirty years.

“Exceptional”

The professional organization Energy Networks Association (ENA) indicated on Friday evening that around 10,000 homes were still without electricity in England, while 45,000 homes were able to be reconnected to the network.

The British Weather Service (Met Office) has issued an orange and yellow alert for several areas of northern and central England and for north Wales, where flooding is already being reported by local authorities.

“This is not your usual fall weather. This is an exceptional event and we are likely to continue to see significant impacts, with possible further flooding and property damage,” warned Andy Page of the Met Office.

The storm is now heading towards Denmark and Sweden where weather services are expecting heavy flooding.

“The wind has already started to gain strength and [cela] should peak […] especially during the night,” Ida Dahlström of the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI) told AFP.

SMHI and Danish weather agency DMI have both issued warnings for heavy rain, floods, strong winds and gusts.

Seventy-seven flights, to and from Copenhagen Airport in Denmark, were canceled, he wrote on X.